“... he sees them – which isn’t to say he necessarily sees them right – and does not touch up his self-portrait. And he’s an iconoclast, a trait I have always found attractive. To be sure, it’s baffling that he managed to find so much Soviet-loving, ‘soft-on-Communism’ conventional wisdom in the United States to challenge; my own experiences in that ...”

“... rich. And always the cold corollary: if you failed, you’re a loser and have only your inadequate self to blame. Scott Sandage has written a splendid book about this American madness. He takes his chorus from Emerson: ‘There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune.’ Talented workers grow rich. Sandage contends that this myth ...”

“... paradises are the paradises one has lost.’ The wording of Patterson and Prendergast is clear and self-contained, makes sense on its own. Scott Moncrieff sounds oracular rather than aphoristic; we shan’t know what his words mean until we have worked on them. There is nothing wrong with any of these versions, and there is no court of appeal in the French ...”

“... abate, and here and there a few bold voices spoke up on behalf of clothing, not only as legitimate self-fashioning, but also as that most prestigious of academic theoretical categories, a discourse. In their collection of essays, On Fashion (1994), Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris traced the change to French feminist theory, ‘whose stylish, wickedly ...”

“... exoticism was going forever to refute his understanding of them. In practice, indeed, he struck a self-conscious balance between what he did and didn’t understand as a traveller, or, in the terms which he favoured, between the ‘real’ and the ‘imaginary’: the creative play between the two, once the Exote is in situ, is simply a local transposition of ...”

“... June 1941 – indeed he comes close to dismissing the apparent suicide bid in 1940 as a piece of self-dramatisation. Finally, if Moulin was a secret Communist his Resistance activity could be explained in terms of division and conspiracy rather than unity and integrity. To complicate matters, Marnham hints that he was perhaps betrayed by a Communist, even ...”

“... exterminate all Armenian males of 12 years and over’. On 20 April, the Armenians of Van rose in self-defence, and held on till a Russian advance reached them in May. Four days later, as British forces were about to land at Gallipoli, Armenian deputies and former ministers were arrested. In Anatolia, the killings and deportations spread, supposedly to clear ...”

“... carries a somewhat dispiriting freight of gentle and inevitably golden-haired charmers, their self-sacrificing attentions entirely focused on men, she did once tentatively suggest, in her novel Lodore (1835), a very different scenario. Fanny Derham in that book, a young woman of superior intellect and learning, is described as ‘more made to be loved by ...”

“... clutches of a strong Zionist lobby: in fact the American-Israeli relationship is based on mutual self-interest, as perceived by both countries’ rulers. In his memoir, My Mission in Israel, 1948-51, America’s first Ambassador, James McDonald, quotes the rationale for US support of Israel that a ‘high Israeli official’ proposed to the Embassy in ...”

“... has also been noted that he had long been a loyal part of the Japanese establishment, and that his self-proclaimed break with the past was more a matter of sartorial style than of political substance. He has always belonged to one of the LDP’s squabbling factions, whereas Tanaka has dismissed the factions’ role as ‘collecting money to buy votes’, and ...”

“... traditional form, at least in Europe, they are mostly free from the temptations of agitprop and self-justifying polemic, though not of the acid of academic controversy. They probably constitute the rare phenomenon of an obituary literature written from the grave. British studies in this field are particularly well developed, thanks to the numerous published ...”

“... obvious that she had energies just waiting for Suzanne, let alone the propensity for mocking self-awareness . . . Irony had never seemed Ryan’s forte. For Ryan, To Die For was just another might-have-been. Not taking the part didn’t bring her down immediately; she went on to star as a faintly absurd war hero in Courage under Fire, which ...”

“... ones.’ All this combined to push Brown towards destructive behaviour and later, possibly, self-harm. Of the younger Brown, ‘pugilistic and cruel’ when drunk, one female acquaintance recalled: ‘had George died then . . . he would simply have been remembered as the local soak.’ In fact, Brown’s problems provided him with time and space to ...”

“... should also carry out their own research, something commercial fund managers too often leave to self-interested investment banks and finance houses. The proposed network of pension boards, with their own staff and specialists, would be accountable to local constituencies but independent of central government. As the Swedish LO discovered, such an approach ...”

“... are such a shrewdly calculated mix of outrageousness and buffoonery, of bullying, histrionics and self-parody, that they almost invariably succeed in setting the reader aquiver; normally, at this safe distance in time, with laughter, but at other moments with an uneasy dismay at the urge to destroy they serio-comically encourage and ...”